Eight Cousins (Eight Cousins, #1) (Prequel Rose in Bloom)

by Louisa May Alcott

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One of the 2018 PopSugar Reading Challenge categories is "A book with a female author who uses a male pseudonym." I immediately thought of Louisa May Alcott, who went by A.M. Barnard. I just re-read Little Women a couple weeks ago, so I decided to try one of her other books. I picked up Eight Cousins, and proceeded to spend the next several hours painfully plodding my way through.

This is a children's book, and is quite short at 300 pages. It should only take an hour or two to get through, but it took me five hours! Why? It. Was. So. Boring. It was hard to believe that this was written by the same woman who wrote Little Women. It did say in the preface to the book that it was written as a serial novel, and is not a perfect work of fiction. However, I was still expecting something a little less... actionless and preachy? Have you ever read a family devotional story? Where little Tom and Sue misbehave, earn a consequence, learn the error of their ways, and all is forgiven? This is just as preachy. Except Rose, the main character, is thoughtful, caring, loving, and sacrificial. So instead of getting to see somebody with spunk make mistakes, we just see a girl doing everything right and being praised and adored by everybody who knows her. Once or twice, she makes a small error but immediately is sorrowful and everybody moves on.

Tldr; boring, preachy, and tedious.